Madeline Rosenberg – The Cornell Daily Sunhttps://cornellsun.com
Independent Since 1880Sun, 07 Jun 2020 06:08:44 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.4https://i2.wp.com/cornellsun.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/cropped-red-on-white-website-icon-2.png?fit=32%2C32Madeline Rosenberg – The Cornell Daily Sunhttps://cornellsun.com
3232Government Prof. Jamila Michener Unpacks Racial Inequality, Urges Action at Home Church Talkhttps://cornellsun.com/2020/06/04/government-prof-jamila-michener-unpacks-racial-inequality-urges-action-at-home-church-talk/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2020/06/04/government-prof-jamila-michener-unpacks-racial-inequality-urges-action-at-home-church-talk/#respondThu, 04 Jun 2020 17:02:06 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=6824156Prof. Jamila Michener, government, brought her classroom to a Wednesday evening church service — breaking down racial inequality to an audience that knows her more as a sister than a professor.

Michener unfolded the injustices underlying the protests pouring through American cities in a talk titled “Grace and Truth,” processing these demonstrations with her fellow members at the Syracuse Regional Church of Christ in a public live stream.

“Even as we grapple with and try to understand how to respond to difficult truths that are now ravaging our country and our world, we should still hold onto grace,” the public policy scholar told the more than 40 congregants. “That’s actually something that I struggle with a lot, which is why I highlight it.”

For Michener, confronting the truths of systemic racism means understanding race as a historical and social construct, responsible for America’s vast racial inequalities. The political scientist has spent her career investigating the politics of poverty, race and public policy in the United States, exploring how communities of color experience government. Her 2018 bookFragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics tracks how uneven Medicaid policies influence democratic participation.

While drawing from academic research, Michener insisted that the talk wasn’t specifically an academic one, but rather a conversation accessible to a “group of believers.”

She pointed to data that overwhelmingly shows that systems, not individual actors, have caused wide-scale disparities — a matter of “life and death.”

“People of color in this country are just more likely to die at the hands of the police. We’re in the middle of a global health pandemic, and in the United States, the consequences for black Americans are dramatically different,” Michener said. “The brunt of the burden of this virus is being born by black communities.”

The numbers tell the story: 13,000 black Americans would be alive today if the coronavirus affected them at rates similar to white Americans, according to recent estimates, Michener said. On average, white families hold seven times the wealth of black families, and according to some metrics, inequalities are only growing.

“Race is a social fact. It’s not a biological construct. It is expressed in outcomes in people’s lives, and it shapes life trajectories,” Michener said. “In the United States, it’s been true since even before we were the United States.”

Long-standing systems that have perpetuated inequalities in areas from education to housing and incarceration explain these disparate outcomes, Michener said, encouraging her audience to think about these institutions as both historical and contemporary systems that have disadvantaged people of color.

But Americans are deeply divided over how they view these racial inequalities. While 84 percent of black Americans say they are treated less fairly than white people when dealing with the police, just 63 percent of white Americans say the same.

“Those differences can divide us,” Michener said about the perceptions of racism. “If you think that this is not really a big deal, and I think that it is, you might not hear me when I’m talking about my experience.”

While Michener told the congregants she doesn’t “have the answers” for healing these divisions, she said storytelling is part of moving past them. In her classes, Michener tells her students anecdotes from her life that illuminate racial inequalities.

“I’ll ease them into thinking about hard truths that people who don’t look like you actually get treated dramatically differently than you do,” Michener said. “Most of us don’t necessarily know that unless we’ve experienced it.”

Still, Michener said everyone is implicated in these systems and must respond to the realities of racial discrimination. She encouraged this response to be actively listening, learning, loving and leaning into discomfort, instead of deflecting, distracting, diminishing and demanding the experiences of people of color.

“Listening is a first step. Learning is another. If you’re like, ‘I’ve never heard of any of these things that Jamila talked about tonight,’ that suggests there’s some room for learning,” Michener said. “It means that there’s room there for understanding the world better and understanding each other better, just to learn and love more.”

Acting on systemic injustices can manifest in a variety of ways, Michener said. That could include protesting or addressing these issues through local non-profits. Michener stressed that making institutional changes also means paying attention to policy decisions about budgets, resources and legislation that are often contested in town and school boards.

“It’s a matter of figuring out: In my sphere, what is my capacity?” Michener said. “And within that capacity, what can I do? What are my gifts?”

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2020/06/04/government-prof-jamila-michener-unpacks-racial-inequality-urges-action-at-home-church-talk/feed/0Cornell Receives ‘Higher Than Target’ Admissions Acceptances for Class of 2024https://cornellsun.com/2020/05/13/cornell-receives-higher-than-target-admissions-acceptances-for-class-of-2024/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2020/05/13/cornell-receives-higher-than-target-admissions-acceptances-for-class-of-2024/#respondWed, 13 May 2020 06:23:52 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=6696770As health concerns and financial burdens reach record highs, high school seniors across the country are reconsidering how they want to spend the next four years.

Incoming first-year students were admitted off the waitlist before May 1 this year because, as the Cornell admissions office tracked responses in April, they knew accepted admissions offers were lower than desired, so “there was no reason to wait,” Jonathan Burdick, vice provost for enrollment, told The Sun.

Responses from admitted waitlisted students in April were “very positive,” Burdick said, balancing out enrollment numbers.

By the official May 1 commitment day, Cornell received acceptances from 3,344 first-year students, a number that is “higher than our target,” Burdick said.

Burdick said he authorized 164 admits from the waitlist, which is in line with the typical rate of 4 to 5 percent of the incoming class. With enrollment marked by uncertainty, Burdick told The Sun in March that the admissions office invited more students to the waitlist this year than in 2019.

As usual, the admissions office expects some admitted students will change their plans over the summer, Burdick said, requiring the University to revisit the waitlist to fill up spots. However, besides these few potential admits, Burdick said Cornell has no plans to admit more students at this time.

In 2019, 3,218 students entered the Class of 2023 out of 49,114 applicants and 5,330 offers of admission. The class saw an acceptance rate of approximately 10.9 percent and a yield rate of 60.2 percent.

Cornell announced in March that it would no longer release admissions data after regular decision acceptances to reduce “metric mania,” becoming the only Ivy League college to do so.

It is currently unknown how many students applied to the Class of 2024, but the data will be released in the summer, as universities are required to report admissions and financial aid data under federal law through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2020/05/13/cornell-receives-higher-than-target-admissions-acceptances-for-class-of-2024/feed/0For First Gen Student, Online Orientation Can’t Replace Early Move-Inhttps://cornellsun.com/2020/05/13/for-first-gen-student-online-orientation-cant-replace-early-move-in/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2020/05/13/for-first-gen-student-online-orientation-cant-replace-early-move-in/#respondWed, 13 May 2020 06:20:53 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=6696440For Angelica Estevez ’24, the Prefreshman Summer Program was supposed to be a college trial run.

She would have stepped foot in Ithaca for the first time, unpacked her twin extra-long bedding and brushed her teeth in a West Campus communal bathroom.

Now, her only roommates will be her parents. The only lectures Estevez will attend will be from her bedroom in Philadelphia.

“I was looking forward to going to college and being at Cornell, being able to learn how to navigate around the school, moving in,” the incoming engineering student said. “I don’t have any close relatives who have moved into college or had a roommate, so I was definitely looking forward to that.”

As Estevez finishes up the final stretch of her senior year at Philadelphia High School for Girls, she will soon adjust to college life this summer without a campus to ease into.

At Girls’ High, she would have been competing in her final badminton season, taking a ceramics class and learning physics. As her classes transitioned online, she taught herself integrals on Khan Academy to prepare for her AP Calculus AB exam. Instead of making clay pinch pots and coils, Estevez is now reading about art history.

Like her high school classes, the coronavirus pandemic has pushed PSP online — leaving Estevez and her peers excited nonetheless, but eager to see Cornell beyond their computer screens. For about 200 students, their acceptance to the University is conditional on their participation in this program.

As a first-generation immigrant, Estevez navigated the college admissions process largely on her own. She moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 6th grade, meaning her parents “don’t know anything about U.S. colleges,” Estevez said, recalling her visit to Villanova University with a friend, among a sea of parents.

Visiting colleges beyond the reach of public transportation meant proving to her parents that she could drive hours from home. After driving her bowling teammates 1.5 hours away to their regional competition, Estevez started planning a spring trip to Ithaca. Her plan was quickly shut down, though, after Cornell canceled its visitation days.

“Most people, maybe their parents drive them to see their colleges of choice,” Estevez said. “But for me, I just got to go to the ones I could go to on my own, because my parents kind of didn’t want to take me.”

Only being able to preview Cornell from college websites and Katie Tracy YouTube videos didn’t deter Estevez from sending in a last-minute early decision application to the College of Engineering. She didn’t tell her friends about it.

At first, Estevez hesitated to apply early, concerned what that choice would mean for her financial aid. But once she discovered that Cornell’s male-to-female ratio of engineering students was roughly equal, her decision became unwavering.

“I am coming from an all-girls environment, and now I’m going to be in a male-dominated field,” Estevez said. “I stumbled upon Cornell having 50 percent females in their engineering school, and to me that was like, ‘wow, that’s amazing.’”

Growing up, Estevez was drawn to engineering after watching her dad “fix everything himself” around the house, without any formal education as an engineer. Estevez said she was always interested in his work, and ultimately decided to apply to Cornell for mechanical engineering, though she is also considering electrical.

Leading up to her acceptance on Dec. 12, Estevez said she took a nap until the admissions decision loaded into the application portal, waking up minutes before the 7 p.m. announcement.

She gasped when she saw the acceptance, and ran downstairs to ecstatically tell her parents the news.

“I was like, ‘Did I read this wrong? Let me read this word by word,’” Estevez said, originally not believing that she was accepted. “And then it was like ‘Congratulations!’ And then I started crying.”

But attending college more than three hours away from home comes with its challenges. Estevez said many of her close high school friends decided to attend college locally to save money. For Estevez, leaving home means figuring out who will pay the bills and drive her mom around.

“[My parents] don’t speak any English, so I pay their bills,” Estevez said. “I write their checks in English.” Because Estevez is an only-child, it is unclear who these responsibilities will now fall on.

Her parents, who didn’t know she had applied early decision until after she sent in her application, told Estevez she could go to college wherever she wanted. However, as the fall semester approaches, the reality of her leaving has started to settle in.

Estevez said she has turned to videos and virtual tours to get a feel for a school she’s never seen before, but is worried that online visits aren’t enough. For the campuses she was able to visit, Estevez felt she didn’t belong at some of them when she arrived. She’s worried the same might happen at Cornell.

“I’ve been waiting for this for a while, even for PSP,” Estevez said. “I think, ‘wow, I’ve never been there once and I’ve already committed. What if I don’t like it?’”

As she waits to hear when she’ll be able to sit in Duffield for the first time, Estevez said she thinks the online PSP will still help her transition to college, especially if Cornell decides to hold virtual classes in the fall.

“I’ve heard great things, that ‘Ithaca is Gorges,’” Estevez said. “So I tell myself look, whatever it is, it’s going to be OK.”

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2020/05/13/for-first-gen-student-online-orientation-cant-replace-early-move-in/feed/0Cornell Promised Housing and Dining Rebates. Here’s How They Were Distributed.https://cornellsun.com/2020/05/07/cornell-promised-housing-and-dining-rebates-heres-how-they-were-distributed/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2020/05/07/cornell-promised-housing-and-dining-rebates-heres-how-they-were-distributed/#respondThu, 07 May 2020 06:45:04 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=6660666More than a month after Cornell promised housing and dining rebates, these payments have landed in students’ April bursar statements — but only after they opted into some of them.

The University automatically refunded on-campus residents a portion of their semester housing fees after the early move-out, but required students to request a meal plan credit. This extra step left some students longing for more clarity, while others wished the refunds arrived sooner during a financially challenging time.

Cornell gave students four days — between April 8 and April 12 — to opt into the dining credit, asking them to manually enter the request so the University avoids inadvertently deactivating the meal plans of those who remain in Ithaca. These plans cost students anywhere from $2,515 to $3,659 per semester.

Jack Sillin ’22 said he found the opt-in process manageable, which required a single button press. But he called this step a “needless obstacle,” worrying about students with limited internet access who may be unable to regularly check their email and activate the credit.

“The move from an automatic opt-in to a ‘you have to opt in’ nudges people not to do it,” Sillin said. “That’s a really easy way to drive down turnout in whatever program you’re doing.”

Some students likely forgot to request their meal plan rebate: An April 12 post on the Cornell Reddit page, with 83 upvotes as of Wednesday evening, reminded students they had one day left to request their refund for unused dining swipes. The post garnered comments that ranged from confusion over how to file the rebate to “thanks for this I almost missed it” and “bless you.”

Even with the potential unrequested rebates, distributing these spring semester refunds cost Cornell about $18 million, President Martha E. Pollack said in an April 22 email. Cornell is projecting hundreds of millions in losses, while students needed the financial support.

But credits for other unused services have been more easily returned to students. Unused Big Red Bucks are automatically rolling over to the fall semester. Graduating seniors and other non-returning students will receive a credit for leftover balances.

For the nearly half of undergraduates who lived on campus this semester, those who departed received partial refunds, called “prorated on-campus housing emergency financial assistance.” On-campus undergraduate housing options cost between $8,772 and $11,510 per year.

Sillin said this move frustrated him, as he left campus more than two weeks earlier — he packed his car and returned to Maine the Friday classes were suspended. But Sillin added that he was pleased Cornell credited students a “reasonable chunk of change” for the resources they could no longer access, although he wished he was notified how the rebates were calculated.

After Sillin and other students opted in for dining refunds and the University processed the housing credit, they soon received emails that detailed how much refunded money awaited in their bank accounts. However, these messages failed to clarify what portion of paid room and board fees they were credited.

“There was definitely a lot of hand-wavy, ‘We’re just going to give you some money back and hope that’s good,’” Sillin said. “I would’ve appreciated a little bit more of a walkthrough about here’s what we’re doing, here’s how we’re making these decisions, here’s how we’re coming up with these numbers.”

The Parents of Cornell University Students Facebook group was also buzzing with parents exchanging information about whether they received refunds yet and what responses they got from calling the Office of the Bursar.

Students were asked in mid-April emails to set up their direct deposit methods as soon as possible. If a student did not update their portal with information for a bank account soon enough, paper checks can be mailed to them if they contact the Office of the Bursar. Students can also pick up the checks, which will be held in Day Hall, when the University reopens.

Other universities, including Harvard and Columbia, have also provided partial refunds for room and board. None of the Ivy League colleges have offered tuition rebates, and Cornell said it has “no plans” for refunding tuition — spurring lawsuits that claim distance learning cannot replace in-person instruction.

Still, many students positively responded to the room and board credits, one of whom was Justin Shillingford ’20, tweeting on March 13: “Wait Cornell is giving a rebate for housing and dining for those living on campus, kudos to them for that.”

Even though Shillingford departed his off-campus apartment while still paying rent, he said Cornell so far “did a lot of the right things,” compared to some of its peers.

“It’s of course unfortunate that [the rebates] took so long because this is such a volatile situation. People have a lot of financial things they need to figure out, so the sooner the better,” Shillingford said. “I don’t envy the position Cornell is in though, having to figure all of that out very quickly.”

But one positive has emerged from the campus shutdown: Cornell is using significantly less energy than usual.

Reduced campus occupancy, alongside energy-saving efforts, has cut wasteful energy consumption and costs, said Robert Bland, associate vice president of energy and sustainability for facilities and campus services.

“Although changes in temperature and weather would make some difference in [annual] variation, it’s clear that there is a huge reduction in campus energy use now over standard operating usage,” Bland said.

The only buildings still operating are those used for carrying out essential research and for housing lingering students — a cutback in heating and electricity use that totals to a $693,000 reduction in energy costs since March, Bland said.

Sparse campus activity has reduced heating consumption by 17,000 kilopounds of steam, a number equivalent to the resources required to annually heat about 2,000 residences.

With dark lecture halls and unplugged lab equipment, electricity consumption has dropped by 3,900,000 kilowatt hours — equivalent to slightly more than the energy a single Cornell solar farm generates in a year.

The Energy and Sustainability team within FCS has also teamed up with Environmental Health and Safety and other offices to hibernate 26 fume hoods — lab safety devices that account for half of total campus energy consumption.

“Close coordination and planning with facilities management operations resulted in a unified and swift implementation of steam load shed in approved buildings around campus,” Bland said. “A group of 21 control technicians, made up of trade labor from each zone, activated load shed and continue to track building performance.”

As the evacuation of students and professors has decreased energy demands, their absence shows on Cornell’s Big Red Energy Scoreboard. Residence halls consume more electricity than any other campus facility, and the building dashboard suggests that energy use has dipped in all of the ones for which it provides data.

In the last month, electricity use has dropped by more than 32 percent in Clara Dickson Hall, compared to the same period in 2019. In the nearby Low Rise 6, electricity consumption has slid almost 46 percent.

Across Thurston Avenue Bridge and down East Avenue, total energy use in Frank Rhodes Hall has declined by almost 80 percent, compared to April 2019. But this substantial dip in energy consumption is not just the result of virtual engineering classes, Bland said.

Courtesy of the Big Red Energy Scoreboard

Energy consumption has decreased across campus, with Rhodes Hall seeing a drop of nearly 80 percent.

Campus organizations partnered with FCS diligently turn off lights and printers in Rhodes Hall, he said. The College of Engineering Green Team has also encouraged sustainable practices within the building that have improved energy efficiency.

Bland added that energy and facilities management operations continue to test and improve energy systems around campus, using platforms the University has developed while it works to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035.

The temporary campus vacancy has only furthered this goal. Energy use had already been trending downward, and on March 7, renewable energy covered 100 percent of Cornell’s power demands for the first time.

“Renewables won’t match demand all the time, but we will see more days where the demand is matched by green energy,” Bland said. “Any action we can take to reduce campus expenses, and reduce energy waste, is supportive of our sustainability goals.”

Gusts of up to 70 m.p.h. toppled power lines and ended students’ Zoom lectures in New York City, Westchester County, Long Island and other counties in southern New York. The same storm also tore through southern Connecticut and the Philadelphia area, disrupting virtual classes as the high winds that devastated regions of the South on Sunday move through the East Coast.

Ciara Frawley ’22 of Yorktown, New York, was writing an essay for an applied economics and management course when her power went out around 11 a.m. on Monday. The lights flickered and then turned off as the trees swayed outside her house. Frawley said she hoped the Wi-Fi would return soon — her paper is due on Tuesday. Nine hours later, her internet connection was restored.

“It’s very dark and depressing out and the wind is very loud and fast,” Frawley said Monday afternoon. “I kind of knew it was going to come sooner or later just because of the trees swaying.”

Frawley said she plugged in her computer and phone as soon as she heard the weather forecast.

Even with charged devices, she and the more than 650 Cornellians sheltering in Westchester County experienced temporarily down or spotty Wi-Fi connection as trees moved outside their windows. Twenty-five minutes south of Frawley, Annelies Parke ’23 of Irvington said though the power in her house remained, her internet connection wavered throughout the day.

The Northeast storm that is causing heavy gusts, rain and a few isolated tornadoes is part of the same weather system that ripped through Georgia and five other southern states on Sunday, as tornadoes caused widespread power outages and ravaged homes.

As of Monday evening, there were more than 600 power outages across New York City and Westchester identified on the Con Edison outage map. A Connecticut map reported an additional 1,500 outages, and thousands are also without power in New Jersey.

Other students were in the middle of live Zoom classes when the platform quit and their microwave clocks went blank. Mia Krishnamurthy ’23 of Westport, Connecticut, said the downed Wi-Fi pushed her off her live applied economics and management lecture, but the power returned after about 20 minutes.

Minutes away from Krishnamurthy, Lilly Howes ’21 said she was also without power for only about 20 minutes in Westport on Monday afternoon, but worried about longer-term outages.

“We’re all in quarantine, and then all of the sudden we don’t have internet or lights,” Howes said. “It’s the worst of the worst.”

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2020/04/13/power-outages-disrupt-online-classes-as-storm-sweeps-east-coast/feed/0Gunshots Fired at East State Streethttps://cornellsun.com/2020/04/10/gunshots-fired-at-east-state-street/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2020/04/10/gunshots-fired-at-east-state-street/#respondSat, 11 Apr 2020 00:34:54 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=6497315The Ithaca Police Department responded to several reports of shots fired in the 900 block of East State Street at around 5:12 p.m. on Friday, according to an IPD press release. No victims have been located.

After arriving on the scene, IPD officers closed East State Street between Mitchell Street and Brandon Place. The incident occurred near the Collegetown Terrace apartments.

Cornell University Police is assisting with traffic control as the IPD is detouring traffic at Pine Tree Road and State Route 79.

The investigation is ongoing and Ithaca Police continues to collect evidence at the scene.

The IPD asks anyone with information to contact them at (607) 272-9973.

Comedian, actor and writer Hannibal Buress will crack jokes on April 17 at 9 p.m. in a live Zoom comedy special, exclusive to Cornell students. The free virtual event will be a Q&A session, fielded with questions students can enter directly into the event’s sign-up form.

Instead of purchasing online tickets, students who want to attend can enter their NetIDs into the sign-up form, where CUPB will provide a Zoom link to the event.

CUPB and Campus Activities are collaborating to bring The Eric Andre Show co-host to computer screens, as sponsoring a 1,000-person virtual event represents uncharted territory for the student-run board that usually brings comedians and speakers to campus, said James Buzaid, CUPB publicity chair.

Alongside a five-year stint as a Broad City cast member, Buress has co-hosted Andre since 2012. He has entertained late night audiences, appearing on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Late Show with David Letterman.

The comedian also hosts the podcast Handsome Rambler, taking listeners through his “unfiltered observations” on topics ranging from sports to philosophy.

As CUPB works to bring three speakers to campus each semester, Buress’s virtual comedy show will follow Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Stephanie Beatriz February Bailey Hall talk. Tickets went on sale for a night of stand-up comedy in March with Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman, but the event was canceled.

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2020/04/10/hannibal-buress-to-headline-cupb-virtual-comedy-show/feed/0Are Virtual Visits Enough? Slashed Preview Days Cause Newly Admitted Students to Consider Schools They Haven’t Seenhttps://cornellsun.com/2020/04/03/are-virtual-visits-enough-slashed-preview-days-cause-newly-admitted-students-to-consider-schools-they-havent-visited/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2020/04/03/are-virtual-visits-enough-slashed-preview-days-cause-newly-admitted-students-to-consider-schools-they-havent-visited/#respondFri, 03 Apr 2020 05:19:23 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=6451527When Ashley Poon of California opened her Cornell admissions decision last Thursday, she burst into tears. Her computer screen revealed a letter welcoming her to the Dyson School.

But Poon now must decide where to spend four years and five-figure tuition bills, weighing Cornell and two other schools — without having visited any of them.

“I just didn’t have the time in my schedule, nor did my family really have the extra money to spend to visit these places,” Poon said. “We decided that it would be better to hold off and just visit when visitation days came out.”

Cornell never announced visitation days. The COVID-19 pandemic has canceled accepted student events in Ithaca and acrossthecountry, forcing Poon and thousands of other incoming first-years to make college commitments without having visited the universities they might attend. This is also the reality every year for many first generation, low-income students, who often cannot see campus until move-in day.

The University’s annual mid-April Cornell Days and Diversity Hosting have gone virtual, after Cornell canceled all non-essential gatherings in early March. In 2019, Cornell’s preview days drew a combined 2,300 students to the Hill, allowing admits to sit in on lectures, meet their potential classmates and discover campus organizations.

Cornell Days, which was removed from the calendar for the first time in recent history, is meant to create a sense of community among admitted students. But it remains difficult to replicate online.

Ji Min Yoo ’24 said her acceptance doesn’t feel as “official” because she hasn’t been able to interact as easily with other admitted students and tour Cornell again without admissions stress.

As the Class of 2024 remains distanced from campus and from other students, the admissions office has “dramatically expanded” online programming throughout April, said Jonathan Burdick, vice provost for enrollment. Students have until May 1 to respond to admissions offers.

CUontheHill, Cornell’s admitted student network, has become the hub for this new programming, connecting more than 3,000 admits through live chats, alongside blogs and videos that provide a glimpse into student life.

However, Poon said CUontheHill has room for improvement compared to platforms offered by other colleges to which she was admitted.

Poon said that for another school’s admitted students network, she was automatically entered into the platform as soon as she opened her acceptance letter. But CUontheHill required a “pretty long signup process,” she said, which meant manually filling in personal information and waiting for approval to join.

Accepted students have also been meeting their classmates through GroupMe chats, Snapchat groups and the Class of 2024 Facebook group. Cornell’s Visit Alternatives page encourages students to watch a live view of a now-empty Ho Plaza and scroll through the admissions blog.

But for many prospective students torn between colleges, walking around a virtual Arts Quad and messaging other admits cannot replace a real-life experience.

Roma Bedekar of California, who was offered First-Year Spring Admission, said many of her high school friends have decided to stay in-state for college because they weren’t able to visit the ones they planned to tour after gaining admission.

Bedekar said she might have to do the same: She is deciding between two nearby state schools and Cornell — the only college of the three she hasn’t toured. Bedekar planned to visit Ithaca in April, when she thought she would decide if she felt comfortable in a more rural setting, a “huge change” from her hometown.

Now, committing to a college far from home that she hasn’t visited feels “really hard to justify,” Bedekar said.

“Thinking financially, am I willing to make this investment and do all of this for a college I haven’t even experienced before?” Bedekar said. “It feels like you’re putting a lot on the line, and it’s just easier to stick with something you’re safe with.”

Accepted students are also concerned how they will fit into Cornell’s social life, a crucial aspect of college they find difficult to assess online, even as they interact over social media.

Sean Dreifuss of Chicago said he remains unsure about Cornell’s campus culture. The Hotel School admit was holding off on visiting until Cornell Days because there are no direct flights from the Windy City to Ithaca.

“On paper, Cornell was definitely the place for me in an academic sense,” Dreifuss said. “But I wanted to hear more about social life and that was definitely hard to gauge without actually visiting the campus.”

To make up their minds, Bedekar is relying on virtual campus tours and phone calls with college students who attended her high school, while Dreifuss is connecting with other admits over Snapchat and Facebook.

Meanwhile, current Cornell students have stepped up to independently represent campus through a week-long Instagram Live series.

Through April 5, Pranjal Jain ’23, Liam Ordonez ’23 and Sarah Sun ’23 are answering questions that range from “Why Cornell?” to sports teams and campus loneliness, in an effort to make Cornell more accessible for prospective students. Campus leaders are also making guest appearances, including Student Assembly’s Cat Huang ’21 and Joe Anderson ’20.

Ordonez, a La Asociación Latina first-year representative, said many low-income students “never know what Cornell is like” until orientation. Now, the hundreds of people who are viewing their evening live streams can access this information.

“I definitely wish I had something like this,” Jain said. “Being able to put a face to a school makes such a big difference, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re talking about things that when you go to Cornell events, they’re not going to cover.”

Some of the students tuning into their Instagram live streams are early decision applicants eager to preview their four years, while others are oscillating between a handful of schools or are waiting to hear back from financial aid offices.

A March 31 Instagram story promotes a live series, hosted by a team of first-years.

Jain said her commitment to helping accepted students comes from wanting to guide other first-generation admits through the college process. She said she made her college decision based on cost and curriculum, wishing she knew more about student life.

“The only reason I was able to get through the process was because I had people who believed in me and wanted to see me succeed,” Jain said. “If I could just pay that back, that’s so much of why I’m doing this.”

Even with these online initiatives, Burdick said the admissions office is still grappling with how to reach first-generation, low-income students. The University normally invites this cohort of accepted students to a campus overnight for Diversity Hosting Days — its cancelation one of the most “heartbreaking” losses, Burdick said.

“That’s the population that’s always, by nature, by definition, most vulnerable, most in need of that sense of personal connection, that sense of support and community coming out of the Cornell campus,” Burdick said.

The admissions office has been working to supplement this program, contacting guidance counselors from schools whose students typically attend Diversity Hosting. The staff that plans this event is translating it online through Zoom and virtual chats.

Still, one reality remains clear: As the world moves virtual, many of this year’s accepted students have some tough decisions to make.

“I wanted to experience the campus I would be spending the next four years of my life in,” Bedekar said. “Seeing whether it would be a place where I could fit in and meeting other people face-to-face is something you can’t simulate online.”

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2020/04/03/are-virtual-visits-enough-slashed-preview-days-cause-newly-admitted-students-to-consider-schools-they-havent-visited/feed/0Cornell Will Keep Its 2024 Acceptance Rate Under Wraps for Months. Here’s Everything You Need To Know.https://cornellsun.com/2020/03/30/cornell-will-keep-its-2024-acceptance-rate-under-wraps-for-months-heres-everything-you-need-to-know/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2020/03/30/cornell-will-keep-its-2024-acceptance-rate-under-wraps-for-months-heres-everything-you-need-to-know/#commentsMon, 30 Mar 2020 04:37:01 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=6428591Cornell revealed on Thursday that it would not publicly announce its acceptance rate for the Class of 2024 — an uncommon move among top-tier universities where admissions numbers are combed over by alumni, prospective students and admissions counselors alike.

Beginning with this year’s enrolling class, the University will halt biannually reporting accepted student application numbers and demographics because these statistics create a “frenzied atmosphere” that can discourage potential applicants, said Jonathan Burdick, vice provost for enrollment.

“We’re doing this because we’d like to reduce the ‘metric mania,’” Burdick said in a statement. “Cornell being highly selective is not news, and the specific data for any given year doesn’t change or matter that much.”

Federal law requires Cornell to report information on admissions and financial aid. The data the University previously reported following early and regular admissions decisions will still become publicly available through the National Center for Education Statistics.

Burdick said in a statement that Cornell’s “holistic” admissions process means “no one applicant’s chances can be guided by ‘averages.’”

Stanford University made headlines in 2018 when it stopped highlighting admissions data — citing the nation’s “outsized emphasis” on admissions rates, which chart in the single-digits or low teens for the country’s elite colleges.

But Cornell was the only school in the Ivy League not to report its acceptance rate last week.

“We’re not alone or completely original in this,” Burdick said. “Stanford started doing this in 2018. I was in attendance at some of the same meetings when my Stanford counterpart started to discuss it in public.”

Read more about Cornell’s decision to no longer report admissions data on Ivy Day here.

How Cornell fits into Ivy League admissions

This year, at least five of the Ancient Eight — all of which have asked students to vacate their campuses due to COVID-19 concerns — reported admission rate hikes, with only Princeton seeing a shrinkage.

In 2019, Cornell joined Princeton as the only schools in the Ivy League to see minor increases in admissions rate. Cornell’s admissions rate rose slightly from 10.3 percent to 10.6 percent last year, as the University both received fewer applications and accepted fewer students than previous year.

According to Burdick, Cornell has invited more students to the waitlist this year than in 2019, as the coronavirus pandemic has created uncertainty around student enrollment. Brown University also reported a slight uptick in waitlist offers to give the admissions office flexibility as it works to maintain a consistent class size, amid anticipation that more admitted students will take gap years.

Cornell’s admissions data is typically made public along with its acceptances in March, with both a data set and a write-up from Cornell’s media relations publication, the Cornell Chronicle.

Sarah Skinner / Sun Senior Editor

The data Cornell previously released on Ivy Day illustrates a four-year acceptance rate decline followed by a slight admit rate increase for the Class of 2023.

Headlines for the last three years touted the “most diverse class ever,” a “record number of applicants” and “new application, diversity records.”

This practice is also ceasing, University spokesperson John Carberry said in a statement to The Sun on Thursday.

Application and acceptance data has long been made available alongside regular decision results, on what has come to be called “Ivy Day.”

Cornell has been announcing its admission statistics, which also include demographic data, in early spring for decades — giving new students and the world a snapshot into the next four years of a Cornell undergraduate education.

This means that Cornell also broke Ivy Day tradition by not highlighting data on its accepted students, such as percentages of accepted women and students of color, numbers for first-generation offers and data on states and countries from which students hail.

Burdick said that information on “enrolled” students would continue to be made available via reports on the University’s Institutional Planning website, which currently displays reports through the Class of 2023.

Cornell tracks admission rates and student enrollment through this platform’s dashboards, a resource that will still be made available each year, typically in August as new students arrive on campus.

Data show that Cornell’s acceptance rate experienced a decline for four years before last year’s slight uptick, with the largest decrease in 2018 — when the University’s admissions officers sifted through a record-high 51,328 applications.

Class of 2024 admitted students react to this policy change

Regular decision applicants who opened their admissions decisions on Thursday to a “Congratulations!” are the first class of incoming Cornellians in decades who will wait to hear their class acceptance rate.

But some admitted students wonder if this shift will ease the anxiety surrounding the numbers-heavy admissions process.

Ji Min Yoo ’24, a senior at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, New York, said she worries that withholding these statistics could “send the wrong message.”

“People might question why they would need to release it later, why they are trying to conceal the numbers for a little while,” Yoo said. “They are releasing the numbers later so it is not like they are hiding them, but it does make you question why.”

Yoo said she and her classmates have found college admissions data valuable, adding that diversity statistics and geography have swayed which colleges they decided to apply to and attend.

“They’re really informative and interesting,” Yoo said. “Obviously for Ivy League colleges, the acceptance rate can be very low, but it’s also realistic. It’s just showing you exactly how many people are admitted.”

Michael Li / Sun Senior Photographer

Cornell welcomed the Class of 2024 on Thursday — exciting news for the Cornell community and soon-to-be Cornellians.

Tess Fuqua ’24, one of Yoo’s high school classmates, said she doesn’t mind Cornell’s admissions data policy change — but she worries about the current high school juniors who rely on these statistics to guide which college applications they decide to fill out.

“During junior year, throughout the whole year I was looking at the statistics, not just over the summer,” Fuqua said. “If I were a junior right now, that’s what I would be worried about.”

However, Fuqua said she thought withholding admissions statistics until the summer could relieve Cornell applicants that were denied admission, who no longer will soon face a description of the incoming class.

“I think people won’t notice a huge change in their lives because [this data] is not available,” Yoo said, “but it is kind of odd, and I question if it’s going to be effective.”

A look at how Cornell accepts its students

Two admissions officers sat down with The Sun in 2018 for insight on the “thorough and holistic” admissions processes Burdick highlighted this week.

“As you sit in classrooms, you are probably getting an education that’s very different [from] a student going to a liberal arts college, because you’re hearing opinions and thinkings of students from architecture, from engineering, from the hotel school,” said Jason Locke, then-interim vice provost for enrollment, in 2018.

“And that really is part of the process — would the student really thrive in a place like Cornell?” Locke said.

The newly admitted students in Cornell’s Class of 2024 went through multiple admissions rounds based on their college of choice, including a first academic weed-out review, evaluation of a student’s performance within their circumstances and possible evaluation by faculty based on how well-suited they are for the Hill.

The process was largely similar for those in the Class of 2024 who were accepted early decision. However, the University chose to release those statistics to The Sun in December as normal — the ED acceptance rate rose slightly, but kept on par with recent years.

Cornell is also choosing to delay the results of the first complete admissions cycle since the Varsity Blues scandal rocked higher education last year. While Cornell was not implicated, an alumnus was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud and sentenced to a month behind bars.

President Martha E. Pollack told The Sun last year that Cornell conducted a “thorough review” of its athletics admissions within days of the news breaking, but promised that Cornell’s “decentralized” admissions — where each college conducts its own admissions — would be reviewed.

For those admitted to the College of Arts and Sciences, this was also the first class not required to submit SAT subject tests for admission, a move taken to relieve the financial pressure of the $22-apiece exams (plus $26 registration fee), an admissions director said in the fall.